


my end, my beginning

by mayfriend



Series: The Road Not Travelled [3]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Although YMMV, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Clark Tells the Truth, Complicated Relationships, Emotional Baggage, Episode Tag, Episode: s07e20 Arctic, Friends to Enemies, Gen, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, POV Lex Luthor, Past Clark Kent/Lex Luthor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:53:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26145931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayfriend/pseuds/mayfriend
Summary: InArctic, Lex and Clark are both buried beneath the collapsing Fortress. What if they weren't? What if the Orb worked just as expected and placed the Traveller under Lex's command?There was a time when Lex would have given Clark anything. When Lex would’ve carved his own heart out of his chest and laid it in the boy’s hands for safekeeping. And Lex still might, if things were different, if he were different, if Kal-El were anyone else in the world–It’s cruel, is what it is.Don’t you already know?Kara had said, and Lex had almost wept, because he did, he did. Because there is no such thing as freedom, or love, or friendship, and Lex had let himself forget, and the universe had seen fit to remind him exactly who he was, what he was.Luthor, Jonathan Kent’s shade accuses;monster, Lana’s voice hisses;Lex, Clark said his name, the same way he always did.
Relationships: Clark Kent & Lex Luthor
Series: The Road Not Travelled [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1626427
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23





	my end, my beginning

**Author's Note:**

> I did say I'd stop torturing Clark... and technically he is not in any _physical_ pain here, so, I kinda kept my promise. Anyway, the scene at the end of _Arctic_ is genuinely one of the most powerful scenes in the show, and I'm forever mad that was essentially the last we saw of Lex, because the sheer _potential_ of that set up - Clark having to follow Lex's orders, Lex finally knowing the truth - is staggering. We were robbed, dammit. 
> 
> For now, I've only done the immediate aftermath of _Arctic_ , but anything could happen after this point; if you have your own ideas about what you think Lex would do next, please do let me know, as I desperately want to talk to people about Smallville and I may use them at some point for a follow-up if inspiration strikes. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Title taken from ‘All of Me’ by John Legend.

He looks so young, choking on words he can’t say as Lex cradles him in his arms. His eyes belong to a fifteen year old boy that Lex still dreams about, the one that looked at him like he was the sun and the moon and all the stars. That boy has been lost to Lex for years, and yet here he is, mute and trembling and so scared Lex thinks, idly, as the fortress of ice and crystal crashes down around them, that it might break what’s left of his heart. 

_Don’t do this,_ he’d begged him. It had been so long since Clark had asked him for anything. Lex wishes-

Lex wishes. 

There was a time when Lex would have given Clark anything. When Lex would’ve carved his own heart out of his chest and laid it in the boy’s hands for safekeeping. And Lex still might, if things were different, if he were different, if Kal-El were anyone else in the world-

It’s cruel, is what it is. _Don’t you already know?_ Kara had said, and Lex had almost wept, because he did, he did. Because there is no such thing as freedom, or love, or friendship, and Lex had let himself forget, and the universe had seen fit to remind him exactly who he was, what he was. _Luthor,_ Jonathan Kent’s shade accuses; _monster,_ Lana’s voice hisses; _Lex,_ Clark said his name, the same way he always did. 

Lex waits for the sky to fall on him, for the end to come, but it doesn’t. It won’t. That would be too easy. He looks away from Clark’s face, the movement almost a deeper betrayal than the one that preceded it, to look at the crackling forcefield encircling them, deflecting falling rubble and icy death. A minute passes, two, and the world is still. 

“It’s going to be okay,” he tells Clark when he’s certain there is no more danger. He doesn’t realise it, but his fingers are locked in Clark’s silky black hair, and the sheer warmth radiating from him means he doesn’t even shiver in the icy tundra. “I promise, I’m going to make it okay.”

In response, Clark closes his eyes.

* * *

The pilot had almost left by the time Lex managed to return to the private jet; he’d given himself a time limit of three hours, and the man had been waiting for two and a half. He’s very well-paid, evidenced by the fact that he doesn’t ask what Lex was doing out in the arctic wasteland for so long, or where he acquired another person. 

Clark still won’t look at him, and had tried to resist when Lex had started towards the landing site; Lex can’t deny the bone-deep thrill he felt when he told Clark to follow him, and Clark had gotten to his feet. He still hasn’t spoken, either, but he doesn’t appear to want to anymore, and Lex won’t force him to speak when he doesn’t want to. This- influence, this power that the orb has given him, he doesn’t want to abuse it. Doesn’t want to abuse Clark. He’s the only person he trusts with Clark, both the alien and the boy.

The flight from the ruins of the Fortress back to Metropolis is a long one, even with a pit stop to refuel in Greenland - knowing that Clark might yet try something, as jumping out of a moving plane or lasering a hole in the aircraft wouldn’t exactly be the deathwish for him that it would a human being, Lex tells him that he’s to sleep until Lex wakes him.

“Lex-” Clark protests in the split-second before his body does as commanded, and it’s the first thing he’s said since the Fortress crumbled. He doesn’t get any further before his eyes flutter closed and his body goes limp, but Lex can still hear his voice - the affront, a hint of anger, a pleading tone. Lex is glad the orb didn’t make him mute, gladder than perhaps he can put into thought. Clark’s voice is part of him, and Lex- Lex never wanted to take more from Clark than he had to. 

Once he’s certain Clark is safely unconscious, Lex makes a list. It’s not very long, but he revises it several times over, alters the words and restructures the sentences half a hundred times until they hold the exact meaning he wants them to: if words are the way Lex is to save the world, then he better make sure he uses the right ones. 

“You will obey me above all others,” Lex says quietly to Clark’s sleeping form, feeling the power behind the words as they leave his mouth, soothing his worry that they would only affect Clark if he were conscious; if that had been the case, Lex would have worried that he wouldn’t be able to get them all out in time before Clark found a way to escape. He had been lucky that Clark had been so dazed after the Fortress’s collapse, in retrospect. “You will never put others' needs above mine. You will never circumvent my orders, or only follow them in letter and not in spirit. You will never sabotage me or my plans, and that includes harming yourself; you are an integral part of my plans, and you will not put yourself beyond my reach, literally or figuratively. You will never endanger me or mine. You will never harm me or mine.” As if sensing the weight of his new restrictions, Clark’s sleeping face puckered into a frown. Lex’s hands were shaking as he continued down the list. “You will never conceal anything from me. You will never lie to me.”

He stops, sits back, runs a hand over his head and only realises once he’s completed the motion that he was meant to have kicked that nervous tic years back. He folds the paper over once, then twice, and slips it into his coat pocket. He means to look out the window, but instead his gaze keeps on pulling towards Clark like it’s magnetized. 

It’s been a long time since they were this close, for this long. Longer since Clark fell asleep in front of him. 

_Seven years,_ chides voice in his head that sounds an awful lot like his father, _seven years and you’re still a sentimental fool. Seven years and you can’t be a man and end it, once and for all._

End it. _End it._ The thought echoes, has heft and dimension that makes Lex’s stomach drop. He looks at Clark, at his dark hair, his rosy cheeks, his golden skin. 

If it had been anyone else- 

But it isn’t anyone else. It’s Clark. Lex could no more kill him than he could reverse the Earth’s rotation or raise the dead. There’s no ending this, there never was, not since he woke up on a riverbank with someone else’s breath in his lungs. 

“Wake up, Clark,” Lex murmurs as the plane touches down on US soil. Clark’s eyes snap open immediately, but he doesn’t seem to process where he is for a moment, not until his gaze falls on Lex and his whole body stiffens with understanding. 

More than anything, Lex wants to comfort him. Wants to tell him he won’t use him, won’t hurt him, won’t destroy him. Lex wants to make him understand, and the worst part is, that he could. He could just- make him. Rather, he could unmake him. He could tell him what to think, what to believe, what to remember, what to forget. He could make Clark the way he was, but better. He could do anything. Anything at all, for Clark, to Clark. 

But he won’t. It’s not a matter of can’t, not anymore, but he _won’t_. 

“Come on,” he says to Clark, and it comes out gentler than he’d expected. Clark tenses, visibly torn; it’s not an order, but Lex will make it one if he has to. In the end, the other man stands and stuffs his shaking hands in his pockets. Lex does him the courtesy of pretending not to have seen.

* * *

“What are you going to do?” Clark asks, twenty minutes into the journey home in the back of Lex’s limo. Clark had spent the car ride with his body angled as far away from Lex as possible, head turned ninety degrees so that he’s looking out of the window and watching the mid-morning traffic like it’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen. He’s still facing away when he speaks, but Lex hadn’t expected anything else. 

Lex isn’t entirely sure himself. 

If Clark was a stranger, then he’d already be dead. That is the most sensible solution, the most permanent, but that option was not viable, not anymore. Clark is an alien, the Traveller, Kal-El of Krypton, and Lex doesn’t know entirely what he’s going to do with him. But he’s not going to tell Clark that. 

“Nothing bad,” he tells Clark, who looks unconvinced. Lex stops himself from saying more, from trying to justify himself; with Clark, that never works. Never. It just makes Lex angry, and sloppy, and hurt, and ends with Clark leaving him over and over and over. 

“Just let me go, Lex,” Clark pleads, “I’m not hurting anyone, you know I’m not-”

“And now you never will,” Lex counters. “I can just stop you with a word. You always worried about it, didn’t you? About hurting people, even accidentally? I understand why, even if Lana didn’t; you always had to be so careful, so controlled-”

“Stop it,” Clark said through gritted teeth, “Just- stop.”

For now, Lex does.

* * *

For as long as Lex had known him, Clark always looked older than he was; when Lex had first met him, he hadn’t even considered the possibility that he might be a freshman in high school. At the very least, he clocked him as a senior, possibly even college age. He wouldn’t have sent a truck to a kid if he hadn’t thought he’d be able to drive it. Maybe, he thinks, he really had been; aliens might age differently to humans, even if they looked similar. 

If Clark were a human, Lex might call him a man. But no matter how much older than his peers Clark looked, there was always a naivete to him that they lacked; an innocence that Lex can’t even remember having, he lost it so long ago. Terrible things have happened to Clark, and he is one of them, and yet Lex blinks and thinks he’s been transported back in time, to those first few golden years when their respective secrets hadn’t been enough to keep them apart. 

Lex looks at Clark and sees the boy that used to deliver produce and spend hours playing pool with him. He looks at Clark, and he sees what he knows Jonathan Kent gladly gave his life to protect. A boy who never hurt anyone, who never wanted to, who helped whenever he could and sometimes when he couldn’t. Lex had never truly wanted to hurt him, never, not even when he thought he did. 

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but Lex has known that for a long, long time.

“What are you going to make me do?” Clark repeats his question from the car, looking around the office space so he doesn’t have to look at Lex. Lex can’t begrudge him his childish rebellions, if that’s what makes him feel like he is still in control.

“I want you to tell me the truth,” Lex says, and Clark’s entire body freezes with fear. 

It’s an understandable reaction for someone whose entire life is built on dishonesty; every inch of Clark is as tense as a bowstring. And then-

Lex blinks, and Clark is gone. He sighs. 

“Come back immediately,” he says, raising his voice only slightly, and for a couple of beats when Clark doesn’t appear he thinks he had guessed wrong about just how good Clark’s hearing really was, but then there’s a crash from somewhere in the west of the house, and Clark is standing before him again, red-faced and practically vibrating. 

“What the fuck did you just-”

“You don’t run from me,” Lex clearly enunciates, ignoring Clark’s furious words. “You only leave when I say you can.”

Clark almost snarls. “Like hell-” he starts to say, before his expression drops, and he looks down at his feet like they’ve betrayed him. When he raises his head again, his eyes are dark with terror. “What have you done to me?”

“What do you think I’ve done?” Lex asks quietly. 

“I-” Clark opens his mouth and closes it. Accusations that Clark doesn’t truly believe die in his throat before he’s able to speak them into being. “I don’t _know_ ,” he admits, and looks so frustrated with himself he could cry. “I don’t know what you’ve done, but I hate it. I never did anything to deserve this.”

That, they can agree on. 

“This isn’t about what you deserve,” Lex replies, honesty for honesty, even if Clark’s is compelled. “I didn’t do this to hurt you.”

“I don’t believe you,” Clark says, and Lex feels it like a punch in the chest. Clark can’t lie to him right now. Even if he could, Lex can see the distrust in his eyes, those deep, expressive eyes that always betrayed the truth, even when Lex hadn’t known what that truth was. 

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Lex says, “but I don’t need you to. I want you to tell me who you are.”

“Clark Kent,” Clark says, and something in Lex’s chest loosens with the confirmation that the human name given to him by the Kents is the one he identifies with first and foremost. “I’m Clark Kent.”

“You have other names?” Lex pushes. 

“My birth parents named me Kal-El,” Clark grits out, trying and failing to fight Lex’s commands from the plane. “The Kawatche call me Naman; you called me the Traveler, just like Veritas.” And then, in a rush as the last of his resistance is torn away: “Lois calls me Smallville.”

Lex knew all this, of course. He knew, or he guessed. He even thinks he’s overheard Lane using that nickname, her voice a grating whine even through the bugs scattered around the Daily Planet offices; it fits him, although perhaps he's bias. Lex has always considered Clark to be the most interesting thing about Smallville, even before he knew just how strange the town really was. 

“Thank you,” he says to Clark, whose eyes are glued to a spot on the ground, whose whole body is shuddering with fear, and who Lex has never felt so close to in years. He feels like a new man, like this is a new beginning. “Thank you, for finally telling me the truth.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/_mayfriend_) and on [tumblr](http://mayfriend.tumblr.com/) :)


End file.
